President's Message - Dr. Yamonte Cooper

I thank all of you for your continued support and participation with CCDA. Time is moving swiftly as we are already well into the second half of the current board term. I would like to provide you with some updates on our recent accomplishments and what we have been working on to provide all members with an enriched and encouraging experience with CCDA.

The fall conference at San Jose State University was a success with 162 attendees. I personally thank the planning committee and those members who presented at the conference. Please save the date of Friday, May 12th for our spring conference that takes place at East Los Angeles College (ELAC) with confirmed keynote speakers Drs. David Blustein and Daryl Rowe. Our conference theme is Career Counseling in the 21st Century. If you are interested in presenting, please feel free to submit a conference proposal.

I would also like to share that in collaboration with NCDA/ACA, two of our members, Esmeralda Martinez and Jessica Li were selected to present during the poster session at the ACA Conference coming up on March 16th in San Francisco. Please check out their sessions if you are planning to attend. In addition, we will soon have details available about our upcoming collaboration with NCDA this October, which will be a Career Practitioner Institute (CPI) in Long Beach.

By now you should have received notice that we have updated and migrated our website to Wild Apricot. Hopefully you find this platform to be an improvement with more user-friendly and enhanced features. Please let us know if you encounter any glitches.

We have also been diligently working on the process of updating CCDA’s financial record keeping system. During this process we began to audit our records and discovered that state taxes had not been paid since the organization has been incorporated (6 years). Thus, the organization’s corporate and non-profit status has been compromised. As a result, we have hired a consultant who is working on bringing us up to speed with our state taxes and non-profit status. Rest assured that we are rectifying this issue and will ensure that the financial health and integrity of the organization is sustained.

President-elect Markell Morris along with the current board has also been working on a five-year strategic plan for the organization. We look forward to sharing more details soon. In the meanwhile, the board will be voting during our next meeting to increase the president’s term from one year to two years beginning with the next president. The thought is to create more continuity and stability within the organization. The caveat is that the president will need to be voted in for a second term by the membership and an opposing party will be able to run against the incumbent president.

In July, there will be a slight restructuring of the organization where membership run committees will be formed to allow members who are interested to take a more active role in the organization. We are also looking for our next generation of leaders in the organization. If you are interested in a future board position or committee, please email me and let me know at ycooper@elcamino.edu. We are asking members who are interested in a CCDA role to begin attending our monthly board meetings while being mentored to take on a future leadership position. Please note that we ask for a one-year commitment.

Again, I thank you for your continued support and involvement with CCDA and I look forward to seeing all of you at the spring conference.